Oil deposits are associated, in many cases, with natural gas, which can often be tainted with significant levels of sulfur (referred to as ‘sour gas’) and other contaminants (like CO2). Natural gas is highly flammable and potentially explosive, hence the gas must be dealt with to allow access to an associated oil deposit. Historically, gas was transferred to a pipeline for sale (requiring scrubbing to remove contaminants as well as additional costs to pressurize the gas for introduction into the pipeline), flared (e.g., as waste gas or smokeless), incinerated, and sometimes simply vented to the atmosphere. However, current environmental regulations prevent the flaring and venting of gas in many locations, especially due to the highly polluting effects of sulfur and other contaminants. Further, the current low price of natural gas means that introducing the gas into a pipeline is often unprofitable because more money will be required to make the gas suitable for the pipeline than can be recovered from its sale. An additional complication is that as new oil drilling and recovery technologies have come online, the majority of new oil deposits are located far from existing gas pipelines. Thus, even if a well operator was willing to spend money to remove the gas, the infrastructure does not exist to enable the operation.
For these and other reasons, there currently exist a number of known oil deposits which cannot be accessed due to the difficulties in mitigating the associated gas deposits. Given the high price of oil, there is a need in the art for alternative methods for converting gas (and associated contaminants) into safe and non-polluting forms in a cost-effective manner. The present disclosure meets such needs, and further provides other related advantages.